The Torn Souls 11 страница

One afternoon, during the siesta, major Bozhko walked in into the room of the flight engineer F.

– Listen, – he said, stopping in front of the poster, – in the evening we will be visited by my pals from Bagram; one of them is a from my commander’s school, but he graduated one year after me. They are going to spend a night here. We will meet, chat, and so on... I want this picture to be hanging in my room just for a day. Anyway, she is the face, chest, abdomen and knees of our squadron, so we should show it to them!

– Just do not spill the vodka on it –the flight engineer F. said, taking the poster off.

– Do not be silly! – Bozhko answered, holding the shaky bedside table. – We have got too little vodka for wasting it on the walls.

In the evening, the flight engineer F., heard from Bozhko’s room laughter, and a muffled guitar song, which only one line – “Look at the radiometer, asshole! ”  – was clear.

The next day the flight engineer flew away early and came back late. Before his dinner, he went to collect his creation. However, the poster had disappeared from the commander’s room.

– And where is the picture? – turning his head, the flight engineer asked.

– You see, my dear, – the major, confusedly scratched his head – our girl flew away...

– What do you mean? Where did she fly and how?

– Well, how do people usually fly away? In the helicopter, of course, to Bagram. They saw the picture and began begging for it! Of course, I refused, as it was our squadron’s face! Then these bastards decided to get me drunk, and you know how mellow I am when I am drunk. To be honest, I do not even remember how I gave it to them…But now she will represent us in another country!

Clenching his teeth, the flight engineer turned and left without saying a single word.

– You should not worry like that! – Major shouted at his back. – You can draw a hundreds of such pictures!

– I am not upset – the flight engineer said, closing the door. – I just do not understand one thing...

Then for a long time he was swearing.

Outside, on the bench near the door, he had his cigarette, inhaling deeply and often, then he got up and walked slowly toward the dining hall. But after few steps, he stopped and turned back. Entering his room, he opened the three-legged bedside table and took out a treasure that he had brought yesterday from the south-eastern mountains.

Earlier, not far from Kandahar, in the village that was hiding between the shades of pomegranate groves, the flight engineer stopped at a small roadside shop.

The tanned, thin old man who looked like a thousand years older than a genie from a famous children story, raised his watery eyes. Carrying a gun over his shoulder, he took a large pomegranate and handed it to the flight engineer.

This pomegranate was of a size of a small watermelon – the flight engineer had not seen fruit of this size at the Caucasian markets neither at the markets of Central Asia, with which he was familiar from his childhood.

But for the artist, this old man held in his hand (his palm was like stained lacquered wood) not a fruit – it was a round vessel, which once had been decorated with morocco, dyed with cochineal, and ironed to a shiny gloss. The vessel has lost its color after many centuries. But the shabby antiquity of its leather ensured that up to the neck of the vessel- pomegranate, its seeds were packed inside like large faceted rubies.

And the flight engineer bought from the old genie this leather vessel, with the blood of Dionysus, paying only five or ten Afghani. Then he was flying over mountains, he thought that soon he would draw her real portrait, with this unique pomegranate.

After getting the fruit from the shop, he unbuttoned the jacket of his jumpsuit, and placed the pomegranate inside his jacket right near his heart; put his hand on it, and buttoned his jacket. He went to the dining room, carrying the pomegranate, near his bare stomach, like mine, and muttered:

– What a miracle it is? and for whom this miracle is?... Of course, it is for you!... Do you want me to draw you?...

The dining room was almost empty, only a couple of fighter-bombers had been finishing their tea. Two waitresses were cleaning the tables. Bending down, caved in and stretched like a cat, she was wiping a long table, touching the table with her breasts. She turned her head, blew her hair off her face and said amiably, without changing her position:

– Sit down at a clear table, and I will get your order...

And then she has gone. He sat down at a clear table and waited, holding a pomegranate in his lap. His heart was beating stronger.

P. S.

There are some photos that have been saved, but certainly they do not reflect the whole picture: http: //kuch. ru/pictures/frolov/22.jpg

At Customs, vigilant customs officers tore off the upper part of the picture containing secret squadron numbers. The flight engineer has managed to hide his picture in a jar of Indian tea.

Abduction of the fire

Senior lieutenants were preparing for their inevitable demobilization. For this event they decided to brew home-made vodka in a welded 40 litre tank (the subject of an open envy from others! ), in which the fermentation process was excellent. This technology has been tested many times – water, a few cans of cherry jam, one spoon of yeast, a rubber hose, and discharge gases in a jar with water. The result was magnificent – home-made vodka, which will knock you down after a few pints.

The 3rd of July– the day of their discharge from the army–was approaching fast. And the home-made vodka was almost ready, quietly emitting gases and spreading a smell of sour cherries around the room. And something unexpected did happen: it was an inspection of each room searching for alcohol and medicines, because even to keep headache painkillers in a bedside table was somehow punishable.

… So, the inspectors were walking in a corridor.

– In which corridor are they walking? –Senior Lieutenant Losenkov frantically asked.

–In our corridor! –Senior Lieutenant F. hissed, closing the door. – Act according to the instructions…

They rushed to the window, carefully opened the wooden shutters, pulled out the tank with home-made vodka under the table, placed it on the window sill, jumped into the street, removed the tank, put it under the window, climbed back into the room and closed the shutters.

Chief of Staff, Political Officer and a doctor knocked at the door and then entered the room.

– Here, I guess, we can definitely find something! –the Political Officer sniffed the air. –It stinks here!

– A jam soured – the board technician F. explained – In this heat even the brain tends to sour. By the way, we have been demanding the replacement of an air-conditioner for a long time. Doctor, how can you let us fly knowing that we don’t have proper conditions for a good rest – check yourself what temperature it is in this room…

– Okay, okay, –the Chief of Staff winced, – we do not need to speculate on the temporal difficulties. Tell me instead, where is your home-made alcohol?

– You can search, – with this suggestion the senior lieutenant F. sat on the bed.

The thorough search has been conducted with peeping under the beds and probing the pillows, but all of these gave a zero result. The superiors went away with nothing but promised to confiscate all illegal alcohol next time if it will be found. As soon as their steps in the hallway were no longer heard, the senior lieutenants F. rushed to the window. He opened the shutters and looked outside... The tank with the home-made vodka was not there.

– I do not get it! – the board technical F said and looked around.

– Look! Over there they are! – and the board technician Losenkov pointed at two running figures. – They are getting away, bastards!

A board technical F. looked in the pointed direction and saw two soldiers dragging a heavy tank. They ran towards the different battalion.

The two angry board technicians easily caught the heavy loaded soldiers.

– Stop or I will shoot! –the board technician F. commanded and the soldiers immediately stopped, put the tank on the ground, and, wiping their sweaty faces with their sleeves, turned to the board technician F.

– Hey, you, two brats! – and the board technical F. ordered – Now you will both go back with the same speed. What kind of people you are, huh? Just no respect for somebody’s property, just grab everything that is not attended.

– Sorry but we had no idea that it is yours, the comrade Senior Lieutenant!   – with guilty intonation one of the soldiers explained. – We were passing by and suddenly – Wow! – we saw this tank; and we took and carried it, honestly, comrade Senior Lieutenant, purely automatic!

The demobilization night

On July 3, 1987, after two years, army service for the board-technician senior lieutenant has ended. The order for his two years army service ( fall of 1985) was issued in the mainland of the Soviet Union. But this order works only if replacements arrive. Nevertheless, in the evening of this significant day, three officers decided to celebrate a formal ending of their service. The fried potatoes, opened tinned meat, expropriated alcohol from 24 brigade together with their own home-made beer, were placed on a table in their room. They ate, drank and had fun.

In an hour after midnight the door opened and the commander, wearing a protective helmet and holding a machine gun in his hands, entered the room.

– So, are we celebrating? – he asked. – Of course, it is a first priority now, but, in five minutes you two – the senior lieutenant F. and senior lieutenant Mukhametshin – should run to the choppers for hanging up “chandeliers”!

It means that our troops need light during a night battle. So, we had to fly to the place of battle and to set up LAB ( light air bombs on parachutes– Editor).

– It is a bit surprising! –the senior lieutenant F perplexedly said. – This is absurd. I am a civilian now, even to say more – I am a drunk civilian! But for some reasons I have to fly to somewhere in a middle of the night to hang out the “chandeliers”! I hope it will be not a final point in my demobilization neither in my life. Felix, do you remember what the fortune teller told us in Chirchik about a late trip?

– If we will be back, – the only sober board technical Mukhametshin, (who is currently flying the chopper of Tarabrin who was on a vacation), answered with a stress on “if”. – I announce the strike from tomorrow! It is illegal!

And they walked out, asking to leave for them something to eat and drink when they will return.

They immediately became alerted that the pair of choppers had mixed crew: the leading board 33 was directed by the Squadron Commander, and the unit Commander was in charge of board 10. For sure, it was out of question about training to synchronize crew actions. Whispering, both commanders agreed about the altitude, speed distance, then went to their machines, and making spiral trajectories above the aerodrome, they took off.

Compared to night flights conducted in the Soviet Union, flights in Afghanistan were different: there was no on board lights, neither navigation lights, end lights, or flashing beacons. There was only one light that was invisible from the ground: a yellow droplet on the tail boom, that helped the wingman to see who are going right and above and where the leading chopper is.

So, the helicopters were spiraling above the aerodrome. Machines climbed up into the total darkness. Usually during spiraling, the commander of the leading helicopter should be observing the second one, but in this case it was total darkness and dangerous disorientations.

When altitude of two thousand metres was reached, the leading helicopter said:

– 532, I do not see you. Report the height.

– Two thousand metres, 851th.

– It is odd. Let’s blink our headlights to each other and define our positions. Let’s do it on the count of three. One, two, three…and both machines momentarily turned their flashing lights on – and each of the crew saw a red light straight ahead!

The helicopters were moving towards each other face-to-face in a direct line. An unavoidable collision with each other was a matter of few seconds away; and then both commanders with a perfect synchronization simultaneously swore and moved the choppers apart.

– Let’s go to work, –the commander of the leading chopper said. –Let’s hit the road. And climb a bit higher…

And they started working.

Thinking of how close they were to a collision, the board technician, felt, how his little shrunk heart has been lost in a black space of his chest. His feet were wet and cold. “If we will get back, –the board technician said to God, – then I will believe in you. I understand that you sent me here on the day when my discharge order arrived, for a very special reason. I do admire your sense of humor. Okay, I believe in you now. Now please take us back, before we lose any neophyte…”.

They reached the battle location, connected with the land, adjusted their course, height, and went into the battle by sending light-bombs down one by one. Below, hanging on parachutes, two blue suns flared up and filled the earth with their lifeless light.

Waiting for the bombs to go off, the pair of choppers made another circle, and released the remaining light-bombs.

– Now we have to wait until it will burn to the end, –the crew commander said. – We will be in a light zone and they will shoot us – we will be on display like under the brightness of the moon! Hey, look where we are now – maybe we should go another way?

– Wait, I will grab a flashlight, –the navigator-operator replied, looking for the flashlight in his bag.

– Are you mad or what, what is the hell with you and the flashlight?

The navigator-operator looked on the pale ground, bent over a map spread out on his knees and struck a match. The light of his match flashed in the dark cabin like a torch.

– What are you doing, idiot!? – the commander shouted. – You blinded me! I now have red bunnies in my eyes!

– How do you think I can check the map? –the navigator-operator got furious. –Am I a cat or something?

And in this stressful time the commander …farted.

A wave of stinky smells was coming from the chair of the commander and reached the board technician. The offended navigator-operator demonstratively waved the air with the folded map.

Suddenly the voice of the leading helicopter thrilled in the headphones:

– Hey, 532, did you sense a smell?

– What smell? – the commander asked, petrified.

Both, the board technician and navigator-operator, started laughing.

They laughed as hard as they ever did. They choked and coughed.

– What? What? Someone fired! –the leader said. – Watch! they are shooting at us from the slope. And we even didn’t have unguided missiles. Stay away from the mountains.

– Got it, –the commander of the second chopper said and then unashamedly re-addressed his farting incident to his crew via the intercom. – Why are you farting like horses?

– It was not us! – the board technician and navigator-operator rejected his claim forcing themselves to stop laughing.

– And who it was, was it me? – the commander demanded the answer.

– Maybe it was someone from the leading choppy! –the board technician suggested and now all three farted together.

Thus, laughing, they went through the battle. They released the remaining two bombs, turned around and returned home.

Super-cartridge belt.

One day, the pilots requested that the squadron commander arranges for a polygon, for them to do exercises for firing from a front-side machine gun. In the condition of real battle, a board technician is in charge of the machine gun, while the pilots are in-charge of pressing the UAM’s button (unguided aircraft missile   – Editor). Of course, all board technicians became a bit worried, but there was nothing they could do - just comply with the order. However, there was one particular reason to be alarmed and it was related to the process of loading cartridge belts. This job was a prerogative and primary responsibility of board technicians, and it was not an easy task: put the bullets into the “mouth”, turn the handle, make sure the cartridge is not twisted – if you do not notice and push the handle, you may be knocked down. After a few re-loadings, the calluses on your hands were secured – especially after loading the cartridge belt after each flight. At least, four boxes with cartridge belts for 250 rounds were kept on board.

The flight engineer F. liked having eight zinc boxes on board – he placed them in a row under the bench. They warmed his soul.

The prospect of the pilots’ activities on the polygon, in the beginning, upset him. He even boldly objected to it and said to the captain Trudov:

– Do not even dream! My barrel is hot, overused, and already began to spit, showing a lack of accuracy. You will be the first who will be killed in a battle due to this overused weapon. And my hands are not made from metal – to load the cartridge belts each time whilst you are having fun on the polygon.

But Trudov promised him to do a loading by himself as much as required. The flight engineer F. agreed to it with one condition – the re-loading will be doubled– for an amortization of the machine-gun, as he explained. They shook their hands on that.

– Maybe I need to wash your board? –the captain sarcastically asked, offended by this deal.

On the polygon the flight engineer F. placed his machine-gun at close range, switched to the electric trigger on the control stick. The captain Trudov with the right pilot, indeed, had fun shooting 500 rounds. They would like to have more, but the flight engineer F. already tired of this stupid machine. He explained to the commander that his machine-gun overheated, and, in generally, there is no need to harass and annoy the weapon with this senseless shooting. Therefore, the commander was disconnected from the firing.

In the parking lot the captain Trudov ordered to the right pilot, called Cute:

– Now you will re-load 1000 rounds. I gave my word of the officer and promised to do a double loading.

– What is my business in such shooting? – Cute got upset. – He promised, and I should to do re-loading now!

The flight engineer F. opened three zinc cartridges – simple, armor-piercing, tracer. Then he got an empty cartridge belt for 1000 rounds, which he collected from four standard ones. These standard cartridge belts always ended unexpectedly in the most inopportune moment, this is why the board technician decided to do double re-loading and create a super-cartridge belt.

Turning the handle, Cute concentrated. The flight engineer F. was controlling misalignment of cartridges and straightened a twisted black snake. The process of re-loading went smoothly. Cute, whose navigating hands were good for keeping only a pencil and making a line, groaned, looking at his fresh calluses:

– Shooting from my gun is a sweet deal that I prefer to do.

Admiring the miracle cartridge belt, the board technician, first, had a smoke, and then started to place it in the normal box, but it was not possible. Only a zinc box was big enough to swallow this newly-created snake.

It was too risky for his health to lift this zinc box, so in order not to overstrain himself, he dragged it to his cabin. After much effort, using his knee as a jack, he tried to put it under the seat frame. But the enormous zinc box was too big for this place. Frustrated, the sweating flight engineer, dragged the zinc box again to the stern machine-gun. There was a relatively big space, so he somehow fitted the zinc box, in a way that the cartridge belt was free to go in the locking part of the machine-gun.

“Somehow, I could shoot from here”, – he thought, very pleased with the fact that now his tail is more secure.

In the morning they flew to Turgundi. On the platform 101 they took on board a drunken captain.

– Take me, guys! – the captain humbly asked. – It should be the end of my war – I’m replaced! – but because there was not any transport to Turgunda, I am in my third day of binge-drinking – and stuck like a shit in a hole – even thought to return to fight again! And take this bottle to smooth my replacement... – and he handed to the commander a bottle of vodka.

Of course, it was taken.

We arrived and sat down on the ground near the road, which is behind the hill from the right, and could see the border towers of the Soviet Union. We turned off the engine, and the silence was relaxing.

– Smells like gunpowder, – the captain sniffed.

The flight engineer F. opened a door to the cargo compartment and gasped. The grey layers of smoke completely filled the cabin. The smoke was corroding his eyes, cutting his throat, there was no air to breathe. Looking closer, the flight engineer saw a passenger who was laying on the floor among the black rings of gun-cartridges. He made an unsuccessful attempt to stand up, but felt down again on the carpet of the thousands of empty shells and cartridges.

– What have you done, asshole?! – the flight engineer F. terrifyingly asked, not yet aware of the scale of what just happened.

The drunken captain– he was even more drunk than before- turned to one side, raised his head, and said:

– Hey, guys! Well, thank you, such a cool machine-gun! All the way out of this war, I was shooting! Don’t look at me – I was saying good-bye, do you not get it?! Good-by to this fucking country, to this war! I am sure the way how I said goodbye – these bitches will remember!

The flight engineer F. grabbed him by the collar and kicked out from the board. Then the drunken captain’s suitcase was followed. The captain grabbed his stuff and ran, not looking back.

He fled to his homeland.

The crew looked at his back with unfriendly eyes. Now on the route between Herat-Turgunda the board №10 officially established itself as a screwball.

– I hope this moron was aimlessly shooting without damage, – the commander sighed.

On the way back, the pair of choppers were flying with a large radius from the route that had been gunned by the captain.

... And flight engineer F. no longer loaded his super cartridge belt. There was no such excitement.

As wrote Zarathustra.

In July 1987, in the sky of Afghanistan a plane has been lost. It belonged to an advisory squadron An-26 that was on the route from Kabul to Zaranj. It made a short refueling stopover in Sindande, and then took off; It was seen somewhere near Kandahar and then there was no communication after that.

To find this aircraft, a pair of MI-8 were given an order to conduct a searching expedition. These two were flying toward the Iranian border at a distance of several kilometers from each other, in a way like an invisible line was stretched between them.

There were many speculations on what had happened with the lost aircraft: a betrayal, a capture of the crew, a navigational error, but the real reason was unknown.

However, when the choppers were close to Zaranj, unsupported information was released that the plane crossed over the Iranian border and landed near some village. Immediately the order to search for a plane along the border to the west and to the east was issued. A pair of choppers, which were led by board 10 one, were flying on the west, and after 20 minutes of flying in this direction, they spotted a small settlement of natives with maybe no more than ten kishlaks ( see “ Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor)

The leading helicopter was the one that landed, whilst the second chopper was circulating above. The counterintelligence agents – theirs and ours- together with a machine gunners platoon, went to meet the locals, who all went out to watch the helicopters and asked for some kerosene. The flight engineer F, saw how the children were running with buckets towards the helicopter, and closing the door, he waved them off. He could not give them a drop of fuel – the fuel was a precious commodity – it was just enough to fly back to Farahrud.

– Commander, kerosene, commander, kerosene! – the boys shouted in unison surrounding the flight engineer.

He tried to push away their clinging hands from his pants and their rattling buckets away from him. He looked around in a hope that his guys had returned, but they were talking to the elders of this village.

Then suddenly, a single narrow figure appeared on the canvass, like in Ivanov’s painting (see “Terminology and Glossary”– Editor).

It was a girl in violet trousers, green spacious dress, with protruded braids under a red hat-skull cap. She was slowly moving with her bowed head, and her black eyes behind thick lashes that were staring at the flight engineer. Her lips covered by lipstick glowed in the dark, and her face was like a rose in the twilight garden. She carried a white enamel can with a picture of a goat; and she looked like she came for some milk.

Looking at her, the flight engineer forgot that they are now on the border of Iran and Afghanistan, but understood that she needed kerosene for a lamp, because there is not and never was electricity in her village. Surrealistically, behind the flight engineer was a time machine, and this girl, with a necklace on her thin neck, was older than him by several centuries. He regretfully pressed his hands to his chest and parted them, gesturing that he would like to give her kerosene, but... Then he pushed the boys away, jumped into the cabin, took three packs of “Bonko” candy out of his bag with grenades, and handed the candies to her. She took it with one hand, looking down and, at the same time, to the side.

– Do not pay attention to their girls! –the captain shouted from the cabin. – We will be beaten by stones! Let’s start the engine, our guys are coming...

And they went off.

On the way home a secret agent shared the information about the lost plane: locals saw the plane that flew in the direction of the Iranian city of Zabol – thirty kilometres from the border. Clearly it was about to land, it was not burnt, not smoking, and both engines were working...

When they arrived home, they found out that this plane crossed the Iranian border as a result of a navigational error (unfortunately the navigator and one of the crew, were killed by the Iranian special forces during the storming of the aircraft); and now negotiations are going on to return the plane and crew.

Late at night, first lieutenant F. wrote a letter to his distant friend who lived an unreal peaceful life and who went to the library, the philharmonic, theatres, exhibitions, who can read Hesse and Mann, Borgen and Borges, and who can sing in a shower. This friend hated the army – never learned in the Military Department how to march–, and he wrote to the flight engineer F. about a rock group who sang a bold song about America and Casanova.

“Here everything is changing rapidly, – he wrote, – While you are doing who knows what, Ryazanov wants to make a film “ Master and Margarita”. When I read Freud and Nietzsche in the library, I do not hear footsteps, wearing boots! ”.

In response, to prove that he does not waste time in vain, the flight engineer F. wrote back about what did happen to him as the traveler of the exotic country. He told him about local customs – for example, about the amazing friendship between men, when one leads another by a little finger, and answering to some peculiar questions, he answered that local women are thin and flat, but the boys have their things to be proud of. He wrote about the strange insects that have become huge in the absence of the birds. Yes, there is no chirping of birds and leaf rustling– they are replaced by the rustle of the sand, carried by the wind, and at night, when he whips on the plywood walls half asleep, it feels like a dry snow...

The flight engineer also wrote about the war to his friend, whose world was eagerly absorbed with the knowledge of Zarathustra from the yellowed pages with yat letter ( see “Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor). However, he tried to do it delicately so that the pacifist soul of his mate will be not hurt.

His mate sent to flight engineer F. the pages extracted from Zarathustra (see “Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor).

The flight engineer F. read them, comprehended and, reincarnated, wrote back. He talked about the white sky and the red mountains of this country, the birthplace of the prophet, about the hellish heat that prevails here. “ The heat here is unbearably–the flight engineer wrote. But we have got used to it, and it does not bother us – on the contrary, we want it more, like in our veins there’s already flowing fire, not moisture. And our rotary-wing animals, in the beginning, were hard to lift off from the ground, but then I learned how to rush into the sky these ridiculous predators, with its benches, with orange-yellow tanks, with ragged blue corrugated floor, with unwashed brown spots on the floor under the tanks.

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